Bush Cautious On Soviet Ethnic Unrest

April 12, 1989|By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN, The New York Times

In considering how to react to the recent surge in nationalist demonstrations in Georgia and other regions of the Soviet Union, the Bush administration finds itself torn between old instincts and new interests.

Instinctively, Washington has long supported the quest for independence in the Soviet Baltic states, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, and greater cultural and political freedom for other non-Russian groups, among them Georgians, Armenians, Ukrainians, Kazakhs, Tatars and Azerbaijanis.

Before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, the administration might have been inclined to condemn a crackdown by the Soviet authorities against nationalist demonstrations like the one on Sunday in Soviet Georgia, where 18 people were reported killed.

``If we wanted to right now, we could really pull the rug out from under Gorbachev`s charm offensive,`` a State Department official said. In fact, the administration is doing just the opposite, reacting with a studied restraint.

At a briefing on Monday, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater, was asked for a response on the developments in Georgia. He shuffled deep into his briefing book to find the policy guidance: ``We are following the situation closely. We regret any loss of life, but we`ll have no further comment.``

Administration officials say that the reason for the restraint is that Washington does not want to see the drive for greater freedom by Soviet national groups begin to move so fast that it unleashes forces that threaten Moscow`s authority.

Such a result might provide a pretext for conservative forces to roll back Gorbachev`s domestic political and economic changes, as well as his more flexible approaches to arms control and regional conflicts.

``It is very tricky,`` said a State Department official. ``It is not for Western outsiders to be urging moderation on people who are striving for their national rights. But obviously we would like to see this movement evolve in a stable way that provides for enduring democratization.``

Stephen Sestanovich, director of Soviet studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the administration`s challenge ``is choosing between a process that is advancing gradually in a very favorable direction for us, and trying to accelerate it in a way that risks reversing all the gains that we`ve achieved.``

Through foreign language broadcasts of the Voice of America or Radio Liberty, declarations by the State Department and other means, the administration could throw gasoline on the nationalist fires in the Soviet Union. But officials say that even if the administration wanted to go down that road, such an approach would backfire.

Administration experts think that oral or material backing for nationalist movements in the Soviet Union -- an approach that has never been U.S. policy -- would transform the movements into pawns of cold-war politics, stripping them of their legitimacy as quests for national self-expression.